THE ENEMY KING'S CONTRACT LUNA

2: STUPIDLY ASKING FOR TROUBLE

LORELAI.

I wore the gold dress because I knew Madox hated it.

He thought it was too much, too attention grabbing, too everything. Which was precisely why I had pulled it from the back of my wardrobe the moment he left my room and shaken out every last wrinkle myself.

It fell to the floor in heavy, elegant waves and the ruffles swept against my legs as I descended the staircase into the ballroom the next evening.

I felt good. Petty and stupidly asking for trouble also, but good.

He told me not to come but I came anyway.

I was Luna of North America. If my husband wanted to parade his mistress in front of every elite wolf alive at a ball held in our home, that was his business.

But I would not be sitting in my bedroom like a scolded child while he did it.

The massive hall was something else entirely. Madox had gone all out, which he always did when there was an audience worth impressing. There was gold everywhere, the kind of decorations that cost more money than most wolves saw in a lifetime, floral arrangements taller than I was, candlelight bouncing off every surface.

It was stunning, genuinely stunning, and once upon a time I would have stood here and felt proud that this was my home.

But I looked around at the glittering crowd today and felt nothing of the sort.

This wasn't even just a regular party. Everybody in this room knew that.

The feral seven rulers hosted these gatherings once every five years, rotating through territories, and the leisure of it was a performance.

What actually happened at these events was something closer to a chess match.

Every ruler present was studying every other ruler. Cataloging alliances, measuring threats, sniffing out weaknesses. The smiles were real enough.

The warmth absolutely was not.

I wasn't announced when I entered the massive hall. Nobody called my name or cleared a path or gestured toward the seat I should have been occupying at the head table next to my husband.

He sat with his entire ruling entourage, proudly displaying a woman he wasn’t married to and a child that looked just like him to every single person present.

Everyone could tell who Ellara was to him, and everyone could tell the little boy was their child.

Standing here in this hall with the reality of my marriage hanging in the air for all to see made me feel more pathetic than I had my entire life.

His gaze was on me immediately, but everyone else seemed to avert their gazes from where I stood.

As if reading a clear instruction from their leader.

I walked into my own husband's ball and the room continued existing as though I hadn't arrived, which told me everything I needed to know about how thoroughly Madox had communicated my irrelevance to his people.

Fine.

I found a wall near the back and made it mine.

Madox's eyes found me more than once across the room. He didn't approach. He didn't have to. The look he gave me was enough.

I would suffer for disobeying him.

And I was staring to wonder if this was worth it.

I pushed the scary thoughts away, trying to occupy myself by looking around the room.

From there I watched the other seven rulers of the werewolf realm as they arrived.

Finn Duskrow was here with his wife close at his side, he carried himself like the kind of man who seemed comfortable everywhere he went. He was the Lycan King of Australia and had a terrible streak for having way too many loose screws in his head, which in this world meant people underestimated him constantly.

But everyone knew, you didn’t become one of the feral seven without being a formidable wolf. Finn walked around with a permanent grin on his face, one that was more unsettling in my opinion than welcoming.

My gaze shifted to Basti Fontane, the Lycan King who ruled over Antarctica. He had his wife tucked under his arm as well, his eyes cataloging the room the same way I was as he stood not too far behind Finn.

Cael Vorryn was South America's Alpha King. I watched him at this table from where I stood, he was so tense and watchful, carrying the the sort of presence that made other wolves in a room unconsciously create distance.

Owen Mordain caught my attention next, as he moved through the crowd, the weight of governing the entirety of Africa sitting somewhat visibly on him even when he smiled. From what I knew, Owen was the most approachable and kindest of the seven.

The rest of them were cold, intimidating and… not so welcoming.

Cress Aldane was rumored to be the exception to that truth though.

She was the only one of the seven who was a woman.

She was Lycan born, Lycan Queen of Asia, with an entire army that made her just as formidable as her co rulers.

She was standing across the room in silver, and when she caught me looking, she stared back for one prolonged moment before her gaze moved on.

I stood against that wall for almost two hours, mostly ignored, occasionally the recipient of a withering look from one of Madox's North American enforcers who had clocked their king's feelings on my attendance and adjusted accordingly.

The reality of this was grating on my skin.

I looked away, resuming my newly acquired hobby of scanning the crowd.

I noticed still, there were only six of the feral seven rulers here.

One of them was pointedly absent.

I knew who it was immediately.

And I was certain everyone else did too.

His name was Roth Blackthorne.

His absence didn't surprise me, not entirely.

Roth had a well known habit of treating these gatherings like optional events, which was either an act of extraordinary confidence or genuine indifference, and knowing what I knew of his reputation, I suspected it was both.

He ruled Europe from Russia, which had always struck me as a choice that said something about a man.

He could have chosen London, Paris, Rome.

But he chose Russia. The coldest and most brutal country in all of Europe.

That told you something.

I had always been curious about him. Just in the way that you were curious about a person whose name came up in your house the way Roth's came up in mine.

Madox talked about him the way you talked about someone you couldn't decide whether to fear or partner with.

He was practically obsessed with Roth.

But Roth was hard to get an audience with, hard to meet even, given the fact that he never showed his face at social events.

And his evasiveness made Maddox so hung up on getting on Roth’s good side, starting a partnership, or building a mutually beneficial friendship.

Half threat, half obsession. It was the most consistently emotional I ever heard Madox get about anything.

And the reason was obvious to anyone paying attention.

Our world had been buzzing for months about one thing. A ruler that surpassed the feral seven.

One single wolf who governed all of werewolf society.

A regent King.

It’s something that’s never happened before in our world. The hierarchy of rule had always been the seven rulers spread out through the continents.

But the celestial event was coming, Nyx's Rising, a blood moon that only appeared once every century, and the werewolf elders had quietly chosen it as their window to make history.

They were going to choose a regent from one of the current seven.

And if you asked any wolf on any continent who they thought would take the throne, nine out of ten would give you the same name without blinking.

It didn’t matter how hard Maddox or the other rulers fought, or built their images or reputations, because generally, the entirety of werewolf society knew who the elders pick was going to be.

Roth Blackthorne.

His reputation preceded him disastrously.

He was beyond intimidating, darkly powerful and controlled the strongest and most deadly territory in our society.

There was just one problem everyone was aware of. And it wasn't written in any law book, or declared by any of the elders, but every single wolf alive understood it.

The elders were old and traditional in the way that old power was traditional, bone deep and immovable. They would not hand the highest seat in the world to a man without a wife at his side.

Unity had to begin at home. Everyone knew it, even though nobody said it.

Roth was unmarried.

So was Cress Aldane, but the weight of that fact landed differently on Roth, because nobody had ever really believed it was Cress's throne to lose.

I looked at her across the room, standing alone, and thought that was probably its own kind of injustice. But that was a thought for another evening.

There was sudden noise and mumurs rising through the ballroom.

The commotion pulled my attention towards the main entrance before I understood what was causing it.

Did someone just arrive?

I pushed off the wall and looked past shoulders and heads until I found the source.

Madox was on his feet, which meant something. My husband didn’t stand for people. He let people come to him. The fact that he was standing, and the grin spreading across his face, told me exactly who had just walked through the door before I even saw him.

Then I did see him.

My lips parted in surprise.

I had heard about Roth Blackthorne my entire adult life. Everyone had. And I still was not prepared for what it felt like to witness him in person.

He was the kind of male that made every other man in the room suddenly look like they were trying too hard. Not because of anything loud or performed, just the opposite actually.

He was completely, almost unnervingly still, walking in with his hand clasped behind his back.

He was disastrously tall, with an air of danger around him that wafted so thickly, it made my throat grow dry the moment my gaze locked on him.

He had thick dark hair pushed back from his face, looking very much like the most handsome male I’ve ever laid my eyes on. He was adorned in a fitted three piece suit with no tie. The charcoal coat he wore fell to his close to the ground, and I’m telling you, the man made a ballroom full of the most powerful wolves alive look like background decoration.

He came alone.

No entourage, seconds in command, nothing.

Every other ruler here had arrived with a group.

Roth had walked in by himself like the party was lucky he'd bothered to even attend.

Madox stepped forward to greet him, that sharp grin still on his face. His mistress stood a few steps behind him, practically beaming at Roth like she expected him to be impressed by her existence.

Roth’s attention shifted to Maddox as he approached where Maddox waited for him. And then something strange happened.

Roth’s gaze dropped to Maddox and Ellara’s son hiding behind Madox’s legs, looking shy. Roth’s eyes then shifted to Ellara.

He hadn’t even glanced at Maddox yet, even though Maddox was standing right in front of him, poised for a greeting.

I watched Roth as his eyes searched around the entire hall, moving across the room very slowly and thoroughly until they came to a stop.

Right on me.

I was standing against a wall on the far edge of the ballroom, nowhere near the head table or my husband or any of the people I should have been among.

And Roth Blackthorne had found me in seconds… like he was searching for me specifically.

Then he started walking towards me.

The crowd parted for him. Wolves who had never submitted to anyone in their lives unconsciously cleared his path and I watched it happen in real time and felt something shift in my understanding of what powerful actually looked like.

He stopped directly in front of me.

Up close he was even more unsettling to look at, and I meant that in the most literal sense.

His eyes were such an arctic blue they seemed white, pale, nearly colorless. His skin was tan and taut, highlighting every perfect slope and arch of his cheekbones and sharp jawline.

My gaze dropped to lips and I felt so stupid for it.

"Forgive my forwardness," he said, and his voice was low and unhurried. "But this corner is hardly a place for a luna at a ball this grand."

He held out his hand.

I stared at it.

The room had noticed. Of course it had. I could feel it, the attention swinging toward us, every pair of eyes in the vicinity suddenly finding nothing else in the entire ballroom interesting.

Every single person present was watching us.

Roth's hand stayed exactly as it was.

"I don't bite," he said. The edge of his mouth lifted, into something that wasn’t quite a smile. Something more private than that.

I glanced past his shoulder. Madox had stepped down from his raised platform and was watching us with an expression I had never seen on his face before in three years of marriage.

To everyone else , he may have just looked calmly curious.

But I could tell, he was embarrassed.

And upset.

The fear tumbling in my stomach made me look down at Roth’s hand and slide my hand into his.

His palm was large, and so rough and calloused it pulled me from my head for a brief moment, making me forget the worry brewing in my gut.

He walked me slowly through the room, like he had nowhere else to be and had decided this was where he wanted to spend his evening.

"The flowers," he said, glancing at the arrangements as we passed. "Whose idea?"

"Mine," I said.

He nodded slowly, like that confirmed something. "And the lighting?"

"Also mine."

"Madox takes credit for the décor in every interview I've read."

I looked up at him, suddenly feeling brave enough to say, "Madox takes credit for a lot of things that aren't his."

Something moved at the edge of his expression, something I couldn’t place. "I imagine he does," he said, and kept walking.

I kept waiting for him to say something that actually mattered, while he asked me about centerpieces and draping and the height of the ceilings.

Twenty minutes later, I realized weren’t having a meaningful conversation.

And he was doing it on purpose. I just couldn't figure out why, and that bothered me more than I wanted to admit.

He steered us toward one of the smaller side exits and when I noticed where we were going, I said, "We're leaving the party."

"Are we?” He c****d a brow and he gestured for me to walk ahead of him.

"You just walked me out of my own husband's ball." I stepped past him.

He glanced at me sideways, c*****g a dark brow. "And yet here you still are."

I didn't have a good answer for that so I said nothing, which seemed to amuse him.

He led me into a corridor lined with tapestries that I had spent three months sourcing and another two having installed. He moved along the wall slowly, studying each one, hands clasped behind his back the same way they had been since he walked into the ballroom. Like a man who was never in a hurry and had decided long ago that the world could wait for him.

And I was watching him like there wasn’t another man’s ring on my wedding finger.

He had been studying the tapestries for a moment, moving slowly along the wall.

Then he stopped suddenly.

When he turned to look at me his whole demeanor had changed. The ease of it was gone, replaced by something direct and unblinking. "That is no way for a luna to be treated.” He deadpanned, “Your husband is nothing but a fool unaware of what he has.”

I looked at him, stunned.

He continued, his voice deep as thick as velvet as he said, “Knowing what I’ve wanted to do to you from the second I saw you by that wall and comparing it to how your husband treats you fills me with an unsettling amount of jealousy.”

My sudden heavy breathing was all that could be heard in the corridor.

"I don't know what you mean," I said, because saying anything else felt dangerous.

"Yes you do," he said simply, turning to look back at the tapestries.

The sounds from the ballroom had faded completely.

Maddox’s ball was hunt themed, and the actualy hunt would be starting soon, with guests spilling out into Madox's sprawling forest.

And none of that felt remotely real from where I was standing.

Roth looked at me for a long moment. Then he closed the distance between us, making my breathing short circuit before he pressed a kiss to my cheek.

It was unhurried and deliberate, his mouth warm against my skin and lingering there for what felt like years.

When he pulled back he stayed close enough that his minty breath fanned over my skin with every word he spoke.

“If I had a woman like you at my side," he murmured, "the world would have no doubt how I felt about her. The world would have no doubt that she is everything to me, or that I would burn everything that exists in her wake if she so much as just asked.”

He stepped back. Straightened his coat. And walked away.

I stood in that corridor alone and tried to remember how to breathe normally.